Hey all. I'm Doyce Testerman, and my debut novel Hidden Things was just released on Tuesday, August 21st, from Harper Voyager, HarperCollins's SF/F imprint. Although it tends to be categorized as urban fantasy, it is probably more accurate to call it contemporary or even rural fantasy, as a good portion of the story takes place in the Midwest. (I prefer to call it magical realism for reasons I'll get into if anyone asks.) If you're looking for a bit more information on my work, you can check out a fairly brief introduction to the book here (complete with typos!), and read an excerpt from the novel on the Harper Voyager website, here.

(RES isn't working for me on this computer. Links are hard!)

I was born in the wilds of South Dakota, grew up on a farm thirty miles from the nearest town, and spent a great deal of my free time lurking in the science fiction and fantasy section in the county library . I studied English Lit in college, got my degree, and immediately fled to Colorado, where I still live. Since I arrived in Denver, I've been blessed with two big dogs, a lovely wife, and two children, in roughly that order.

I am not a full-time author, though (thanks to the nature of my day job) I am a full-time writer. Probably due to the less romantic nature of the other writing work I do, I find I have very little patience for writers who are over-precious about their creative process.

When I'm not writing stories, writing for work, or with my family, I am generally either playing games (sometimes also with my family) or writing about them (either on my own website or something else's). I play a lot of computer games and MMOs, as well as pen and paper RPGs and boardgames -- a hobby that goes back (for me) to the very early eighties. I watch a few TV shows (Game of Thrones, Community, Doctor Who), and mourn many more (Firefly, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies...). I tend to read in bursts, with breaks in between in which I interact with other humans and remember to eat and take my kids to school. Some of my favorite authors are Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Roger Zelazny, and Tolkien. Naomi Novik has recently shouldered her way in there as well.

I've been an active participant and supporter of National Novel Writing Month for over ten years, and I've learned a lot about writing and what works and doesn't work for me as a result of that project. Hidden Things is, in fact, a 'NaNoWriMo Novel', albeit one that saw extensive expansion during the revisions that followed that somewhat spare first draft.

I am currently working on a novel called Adrift, which alternates between two stories: one a hard sci-fi story set on a moon-sized junkyard/Tortuga of abandoned spaceships, the other a series of bedtime stories full of talking animals and a magical forest. I've described it as "switching back and forth between Blade Runner and Redwall", which gives my agent a bit of a headache but makes me smile. Once that's wrapped up, I'm heading back to the setting of Hidden Things for awhile.

I meant to post this about a half hour ago, but I got distracted by the post from the six-year reddit lurker.

I will be back at 7PM Central to answer questions live, so please don't be shy: When this whole thing winds down, we will give away copies ofHidden Things to five randomly selected participants in this AMA, but as the man says, you have to enter to win.

Let's get this thing going: Ask Me Anything!

Edit: The bells have chimed: Let's do this!

Edit Edit: Two hours in, and I think I've hit most everyone. I'm going to keep watching and refreshing for another fifteen or twenty minutes, so if you have replies and follow-ups, now is the time.

Son of Edit: Okay, that's two-hours thirty minutes, and I'm going to pause for the evening. I'll come back on a couple times tomorrow and follow-up on any replies or questions that I missed. Thanks SO MUCH for the great AMA, everyone -- I had a great time with it, and loved every question. Cheers!

I see that nobody else has asked about your preference for calling it "magical realism" so I will. I think I have a good idea what it is you mean but getting your explanation would be awesome and help to truly understand the style in which you wrote your book. Thanks!

When it comes to magic in a fantasy story, there are (in my view) pretty much two ways you can handle it.

The first way is what I think of as the straight fantasy method. The basic approach in straight fantasy is that magic happens, it’s different than what we think of as “the normal way to do things”, but it’s basically a quantifiable thing. If the main character does a spell, it will work thusly, every time, having basically the same effect, and the person casting that spell will be x tired for y hours thereafter, or whatever. There will be some wonder and mystery to the whole thing at the beginning of the story, but over the course of the book (or book series) pretty much everything gets spelled out (heh) to the point where magic is essentially just a second set of Physics laws that only a few people know, but which everyone has to obey.

The second way is what I used to call “fairy-tale magic” and have since started referring to as magical realism (because it’s a poncy literary term that nevertheless seems to fit). My basic approach with this is that you don’t usually get the “how” behind the weird stuff. Why does cold iron hurt faeries? Who cares? It does, so let’s just move on -- dwelling on that is no more important (or interesting, in this type of story) than spending two pages explaining why fire burns people. One of the key elements of this kind of story is that a lot of the ‘natives’ in a story like this don’t think of magic as being anything other than The Way Things Are, and constant questions about the Hows and the Whys make them roll their eyes like you’re a kid who keeps asking why grass is green and the sky is blue. It just is, kid; shut up and eat your ice cream. Magical realism lays magic right alongside the normal world with (almost) everyone treating it as if that's totally normal (even if they don't know how it works).

Also important (maybe most important, to me) is the idea that knowing/explaining a thing from top to bottom, back to front, inside and out actually takes away all the magic the thing once had. That's an idea I even spent a little time on in the story.

As a reader, I like both approaches. If you need examples, Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series is a contemporary example of straight fantasy in a modern setting, and it appeals to a lot of people, including me if I’m in the right mood; most of the stuff Neil Gaiman writes follows the second style.

As a writer, I’m very strongly drawn to the second style. I think this is at least partly because I have a long history of playing role-playing games, and if I want to tell a story where the rules are all laid out and specific and clear, I’ll sit down with some friends and play a game, rather than write a book.

Excellently put and I love your take on things. That actually wasn't quite what I thought you meant by it but after your explanation I, glad that it meant what you said rather than what I thought. I completely agree with you that there are many cases in which a book seems to explain too much for it to fit into the story's theme. There are the occasional books where a character is completely new to the world that allows for a complete explanation but most books just give you every detail even when unnecessary.

Needless to say your take was not only refreshing but wonderfully insightful and I can't wait to check out your book! Thanks for the response!

There are a couple ways to answer that, depending on whether you're looking at the book 'product' itself, or at the story bits.

Physically, fantasy (and sci-fi) books have gotten a lot fatter. To be fair, I'm looking back a little bit further than just 25 years to make that assessment, but I cut my teeth (and imprinted) on stuff like Wizard of Earthsea, Princess of Mars, My Name is Legion, et cetera, and those books are, by current standards, tiny. The original Earthsea trilogy would be packaged and sold as a single book today, and still be a little bit on the light side compared to other stuff on the shelves. I think those leaner, meaner books were a result of the influence of pulp magazine publishing -- look at each chapter in those books, and you'll see a wordcount that matches really well with serial publication guidelines of the day. In some cases (Zelazny) that was because that was how the author had got their start and continued to made bank, but in others I think it's just a reflection of the culture in publishing at the time. Tolkein changed that expectation (though it took a long while, as does everything in publishing). His massive (for that time) books devoted huge swaths to world-building -- these were books in which the author had clearly taken the time and space to lie down and roll around in the clover and get comfortable. You can easily see his effect during the eighties, when world-building was The Thing.

Which brings me to the changes to the story in the last 25 years. That time frame takes us back to the 80s, and if you look over the top selling fantasy books from that time, you'll see a lot of world-building. The Belgariad, Shannara, Feist's Riftwar Saga. I'm not dismissing the plot and story in those books (at all -- I read the hell out of most of them), but when you stop and examine why many of the books on the bestseller lists were getting so much longer, the answer's usually world-building.

To me, the shift from then to now has been toward more human portrayals of the characters. Again, I have nothing against the characters in the Riftwar books or most any other series you care to name, but the way in which those characters were protrayed was more as icons in a heroic epic than the kind of POV that puts you right down inside the brainmeat of a human, fallible person, which is much more the tendency today. Like every change in publishing, though, this all came on slowly, and you can see the start of it back then with Brust's Vlad Taltos series, King's Dark Tower stuff, Cook's Black Company. In many of those cases (early Brust the exception), the books remained 'fatter', but the page count went to getting into the characters' heads instead. (King's said that about 150 thousand words is a 'comfortable length' for that kind of exploration.)

The culmination of both trends is something like A Song of Ice and Fire books, which do a lot of world building and character delving and are, as a result, fairly massive.

Just to clarify, the story I'm working on now is hard sci-fi: Hidden Things most definitely is not. Just don't want any confusion.

Now then:

By my definition, Hard SF is genre fiction that adheres to the "known rules" of science as closely as the story and my knowledge can manage, which generally means very little hand-wavy, never-explained tech that lets you cut corners. In other words, Inertia is a thing you can't simply ignore, artificial gravity (with a few weird-but-consistent exceptions) is achieved by rotating something at the right speed, and stuff like that. I had to make an exception for Faster Than Light travel, because of the kind of story I'm writing, but I personally see it as pure fantasy and wishful thinking. It's a sci-fi story that Neil deGrasse Tyson could read and not have too long a list of things I got wrong.

What it means in terms of my writing is that I need to do different research than I normally would, so I have the right answer to things like "what really happens when someone is exposed to hard vacuum?", or "what are the long-term effects on a metal container half-full of liquid ammonia, and what happens when you fiddle with it?" Adrift is that kind of story, as well as one that touches on transhumanism and faith, where it isn't focusing on the many valid permutations of 'family.'

I like chocolate, I like oranges, and I like shots, so... First, poor some kind of chocolate liqueur into the glass. Then layer in Irish Cream very slowly (over the back of a spoon, to avoid disturbing the lower layer). Use the same method to layer Grand Marnier and/or Triple Sec in for the third layer. Raise a toast to your mates, say "Don't worry, I'm the Doctor," and knock it back. Three or four of those and you will travel in time. We'll call it the Sonic Screwdriver, and ignore that there are already like fifty of those on the internet.

Ski, although I can snowboard if I have to (most of the basic skills cross over).

Ribeye, probably. Probably. Kind of depends the day -- I do like well-prepared fish.

Cheese? Yeah, I would. I think any rash that didn't rise in welts or make me break the skin with scratching would still be worth it, because cheese. I'd probably ration myself, but no more cheeseburgers? That's... not happening.

Bill Cosby. I probably listened to Why is There Air on my parents' record player over a hundred times as a kid. I suspect I can still do his Hofstra bit from memory.

Baseball bats at dawn. You would die at the same time as you shattered my collarbone, effectively crippling me for the next 10 months. And all over a bunch of ABBA cds... what the hell, man?

I read your EVE blog religiously (I have it left open at work and home, and refresh it like once an hour...I might have an addiction) and love the recent 'in character' posts. As I love space themed stories, can we get a teaser of Adrift? Has Adrift been influenced by your time playing EVE, or is this something you started before playing? Are far future stories any easier/harder to write than something set in the present time?

I actually started Adrift quite a long while before I encountered Eve, and I'm working from an outline on that one, so there's been very little chance of any of Eve creeping in there -- it's really not the right kind of story for ship-based mercenaries.

Teaser? MMmmmyeah? Seems like I actually recorded something like the first 13 sections to audio somewhere...

Here we go: the recording is bad, and I'm reading from a first draft, but whatever. Knock yourself out.

I'd say the stories are about the same difficulty to write. The research is different, but the bulk of the work is always in making the characters into real people, no matter what I'm writing.

You say in your post that "I find I have very little patience for writers who are over-precious about their creative process". What makes a process over-precious? Can you describe your own writing process? As an avid reader who's never written anything creative I'm always fascinated to hear about how authors create their works.

The thing with writing is it's art -- I'd never say otherwise; it's obviously a creative act requiring a lot of imagination.

But the thing with writing books is that it's business. There are contracts. Deadlines. Deliverables.

Now that doesn't mean that a writer needs to be mechanical and mercenary about the writing process -- I don't imagine that kind of approach would result in a very good story -- but it does mean that if you want to get your stuff out there in the world where a lot of people can see it, you need to treat it like work. Like a job. (This is, incidentally, even more true for someone who's going the self-publishing route, because not only do you need to get your writing done on time, you line up good editors, do (or hire) good layout and design, and deal with the guts and gears of the actual book publishing.)

Lots of writers, even successful ones, want the writing-as-art to supercede writing-books-as-business, because (to be honest) it's a lot easier to throw your hand to your forehead, swoon to the divan, and say "I'm just not feeling my muse today." I know enough people in publishing to hear almost-daily stories of deadlines missed, or shifted, or renegotiated, or simply ignored. I think about what would happen to most people if they tried that in any other line of work, and I just shake my head.

"I know I signed a contract that said I would get this website up in 90 days, but my personal creative process really demands at least 13 months for a finished product. Well, when I say 'finished'... first draft."

The thing is, it's more remarkable when a writer doesn't act like that than when they do. The drama-free, deadline-hitting author is a treasure, and in general those writers have one thing in common: they treat it like a job. Because that's what it is -- probably the best job in the world, if it's a thing you enjoy, but still a job.

Can you describe your own writing process? As an avid reader who's never written anything creative I'm always fascinated to hear about how authors create their works.

I stole this many years ago from Roger Zelazny, who had a tremendous work ethic about his writing, and I've never encountered any reason to change it. It it not the only way to do it, but as someone who can't simply sit down at 8 am and write until I have my word count for the day, it works for me.

I make sure I have 'spots' every day when I can write. Once I open the work in progress, I have to write at least three sentences. Sometimes three sentences is all I get (either due to interruptions or because I'm working through a tricky section or because I'm a little stuck), and sometimes I'll get a bit more before my time runs out, and sometimes things will really take off and I don't give a damn if my time's run out. However, even if it's a bad writing day, and each of your four sessions only yielded three sentences, you can look back and say "I didn't screw around. I got a page down, and that will make it easier tomorrow." I'm lucky in that I don't often have 'bare minimum' days, but it's happened, and I've said those exact words.

I also have a "Rule of Three" which comes up more during revisions. Only three facts in any description. Only three uses of the same joke. Only three uses of the same anything. Only three adverbs per story. Only three exclamation points per story (must be in dialogue). There are more, but the list is kind of long.

I really love urban fantasy, and have read the Dresden series (13$), the iron druid chronicles (9$), vampire for hire(4$), the occult crimes unit (6$) and the black knight chronicles (5$, 3$ for fist book)

My question is - how did you go about setting the price for your book? Was it entirely your decision, or do you have a publisher that takes care of this?

The reason I ask is that the price seems quite high for a first book (10.15$ for the kindle edition - in Canada. Which, BTW, is 5c more expensive than print version). Only the Dresden books are more expensive than this, and they are a well established and well loved franchise (with a TV series!). Do you have any control over international pricing policies?

I can say that although I really like giving new authors a chance, and your book sounds interesting - I normally will not pay more than 4-5$ for a book/author I know nothing about.

Don't mean to step on Doyce's toes but I'm here reading and know the answer so thought...why not.
Doyce is traditionally published by large big-six publisher and so has no say over the price of the books. This is a marketing decision done by the publisher.

On the US page the price is $7.99 which is actually cheaper than most books of his classification. He is published as a trade paperback ($14.95) and usually an ebook for that would be $9.99. So he is $2 cheaper than the regular price. Most $7.99 ebooks are for mass market paperbacks whose paper copies sell for $7.99. In comparison...my books are also trade paperback (and priced at $14.95 like his) but my ebooks are prices at $9.99.

Dresden in US is mass market paperback and $9.99 for both. Iron Druid in US is mass market paperback and $7.99 for both. Vampire for high is a self-published book and these are generally price under $5. I'm not familiar with the other two nor am I familiar with pricing in CAN. All my experience is with US.

Whn looking at print pricing verses ebook - look at LIST price for the paperback. The Canada price is $16.99...but Amazon has put the book on sale for $12.26. This is a decision by the retailer and neither the publisher or the author control that discount price. The publisher sets the list price, sells the book to the retailer (generally for 50% off) and the retailer can charge whatever they want.

$4 - $5 boook prices are usually only found by self-publishers, books from small presses, or those on sale from a big-six publisher.

The short, unsatisfactory (albeit completely true) answer to your main question is that I have zero input in the prices set for the books, and I have almost no influence when it comes to adjusting them once they are put out there. I do have some fairly strong opinions about it, and I nagged as much as a first-time author can to get what I considered reasonable prices for the print and ebook editions, which result I blogged about over here. That's why the Hidden Things ebook is currently (as Michael noted) $2 cheaper than the regular price (for now -- it may or may not stay that way, depending on sales -- I don't think I'm giving anything away if I say that the Big Six are still getting a handle on what they consider the best price points).

When it comes to prices set outside the US, I'm afraid I have even less influence and in many cases no knowledge of where things lie. I think it's silly that an ebook would cost more than a print edition of any kind (read that blog post I linked to see why), and I can't explain why that is. I was going to suggest Google eBooks, as their price looks good, but when I flip on Expat Sheild, I see that it's not available through them if you aren't in the US.

Could you PM me a screenshot of the kindle/TPB prices from amazon.ca? (I tried to look up kindle prices on Amazon.ca, but I can't see any ebooks on the site, probably because I'm Ahmurican.) I'll pass it off to Harper and at least ask them if that's a screw up.

I totally understand your reluctance to invest heavily in a book and author you're unfamiliar with. Hopefully this AMA will give you enough information to decide one way or the other, and if not, there's a link in my OP to a free excerpt from the novel that might help.

Very best.

(Also, read Michael's post, as he remembered a number of other points that I forgot.)

I wouldn't say publishers are evil. They're a business. Some folks may say that's the same thing - I reserve judgement and wait for more information.

Do I have to have a publisher? No. I choose to work with one, for the reasons I mentioned here. I may do some stuff 'solo' at some point, for fun or as an experiment, but not if that screws my agent out of getting paid -- we have a business agreement, and I respect her (and everything she's contributed to my success) too much to ignore it.

I have no idea what the ebook and print ratios are at this point, since Hidden Things is my first published book, and it only came out two days ago. :)

I think it's silly that an ebook would cost more than a print edition of any kind (read that blog post I linked to see why), and I can't explain why that is.

In 99.9% of the cases where this occurs it is because Amazon has discounted the paper book (which is common for them). Most publishers do ebooks through the agency model, so the price is dictated by the publisher and Amazon generally does not discount these.

If you look at the list price of the paperback it shows that the publisher priced the paper higher than the ebook, but they have no control over how much discounting Amazon does - so it is Amazon, not the publisher who usually creates a situation where the ebook is priced lower than the paper.

Query them. Take notes on common themes in rejections. Fix those things.

Eventually find one that's interested, work with them and their suggestions until they're very interested.

Sign a contract with them.

They start the work all over again to find an publisher/editor who likes the book, representing you in this process and basically repeating all the 'find an agent' steps until an editor is ready to offer you a contract.

(Most editors or publishers won't work with you unless you have an agent, so there's no much point in contacting them directly, even if you have a way to do so.)

It's not glamorous, but the 'work' part never is, and it's what I wanted to do, becuase it seemed to me that being able to pass that gauntlet was a trial that had merit. Whether I stick with traditional publishing for the next thing depends on them, me, and my agent. In the long term, I'm sure I'll try out a little bit of everything (self-pub, free stuff, whatever) as time goes on, because I'm like that.

I will say this: publishing as an industry has flaws (a great many at the moment, mostly surrounding its relationship with the internet and technology), but when it comes to the individuals within the industry -- the editors and other professionals -- I count myself incredibly lucky to have had the chance to work with them. They are so damned good at what they do, and a lot of what they do is challenge the writer and help them become better at their craft. I've learned more in the last year than I'd ever expected.

Did you find that your degree in English Lit has helped you with fantasy writing?

I'm sure it does, but that education is so much a part of my basic operation I'm hardly aware of it at this point.

I remember reading Lord Byron in college and thinking "Oh, so there have always been writer-nerds who longed for a vampire to show up and make them immortal -- that's kind of comforting to know." I actually wrote a paper on the subject at one point.

I really loved Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline. That damned book kept me up until 4am the night I started it, and drove me to distraction the following day until I finally gave up and sat down to finish it.

Another recent offender in the "kept me up way too late" lineup is Naomi Novik and her Temeraire series. A friend gave me the first six books as a gift awhile back, and they've been sitting on my to-read shelf since then. I took the first one down at about seven one night, and I think I stumbled to bed at about three in the morning.

For a lot of complicated reasons, I really loved Terry Pratchett's Nation as well -- I read that one quite awhile ago, actually, but every time someone asks me about recent books I liked, I think of it, so I suppose that means something.

In terms of influence, there are many, but I suppose the big three are Zelazny, for showing how to do a lot with a little; Stephen King, who is pretty much my gold standard when it comes to characterization, dialogue, and general creepification; and Gaiman, for his light touch when it comes to magic and odd things, as well the lyrical nature of his prose -- he is a real joy to read aloud, regardless of which of his books you pick up. Sir Terry Pratchett's gift for humor deserves a mention as well.

Thanks for the AMA, I look forward to reading more of your work, and thank you for such an excellent reply! You've given me a few new books to add to my list.

My question was fairly run-of-the-mill, but I always like knowing what authors are reading, and who they look to for, as you put it so well, their "gold standard" for certain areas of their craft. With so many great authors out there writing I never really know what to expect. I guess that's just another way of say thanks for sharing.

I work out small chunks of time, with (usually) a long session once the kids are asleep. In the morning before anyone else is up. A couple breaks during the day (maybe just a sentence or three) and lunch time (eat fast, get 40 minutes alone with my netbook on a table in the cafe). And then evenings until I have my wordcount.

It isn't easy. I mostly wrote short stories from the time my daughter was born until she turned two, and focused (mostly, not entirely) on revisions to existing stories when my son was born. He's almost two now, so hopefully...

I made a bit of a mistake with NaNoWriMo last year, because I'd forgotten that I'd actually taken two years off from it after my daughter was born. I thought "I should be able to do it -- I did it before." Except I hadn't.

So my son was about 10 months old, not sleeping through the night yet, not walking but somehow into everything.

I finished, but it was not fun or easy for either me or my wife, so I may not be doing it this year. I'll see when it gets closer. The "four times a day, 3 sentence minimum" method works fine for everything except NaNoWriMo, because that bare minimum won't meet your daily word requirement. Something somewhere else in your schedule has to give, and sometimes nothing else can.

As for developing another method, I'm not sure that when it comes to first drafts, there is a better method (for me) than the one NaNoWriMo teaches -- butt in chair, hands on keyboard, and write; no excuses. The main takeaway -- the really important thing to remember about that process if you want to take what NaNoWriMo gives you and turn it into a successful book, is that what you have on November 30th isn't the finished product -- it is miles and miles and miles from that. You didn't carve a statue -- you cut out a likely-looking block of stone.

I'm torn on this answer, becuase I love to travel, and I find that both exploring an unfamiliar place and the act travel itself is like standing in front of a firehose of ideas and inspiration (so long as the 'travel' is something better than being shipped via air-freight in a giant multi-human mailing tube).

With that said, I think that you can do a lot with good research, which is a kind of exploration of its own. I mean, we are all of us - as readers - experienced travelers; we visit a dozen new places on a good day, from King's Landing to the Waverly River to the rail systems of western Europe in 1944.

I'd say that actual travel is a great gift to give yourself, if you can manage it, but it's not requisite.

Start here, and if that does not satiate you, proceed to this, but keep in mind that the posts on that second page are meant to be consumed one day at a time, as you go through November.

Also, what genre of books would you recommend that aren't SF/F? Any book in particular of that genre?

In non-fiction: History. As much as you can take, on as many different topics as you can manage. The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century, or Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, or even Battlefields by Garth Ennis. A Perfect Red by Amy Butler Greenfield is a fascinating look at the global race for the perfect red dye, and the affect this had on economies and a host of other things. I have Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Carnage and Culture by Victor Davis Hanson, The Wooden World by N.A.M Rodger, The Roman Revolution by Ronald Syme, and The First World War by John Keegan on a recently-acquired to-read list.

For slightly more sciency stuff, I really like (and have frequently referenced) The World Without Us.

How many revisions did you have between NaNoWriMo and publishing Hidden Things? Did you mention it was a NaNoWriMo story when you were trying to get published? If so do you think it made it easier or harder to get picked up?

Quite a few revisions, actually, partly because when I wrote it, I had in mind the sort of lean, mean stories I grew up on. 175 pages, drop the mic, and walk off stage. Boom.

Problem is, that isn't what publishers (or, really, readers) expect from a full-length novel these days, so after what I think of as my 'normal' revision passes (once for basic clean-up, once again for clarifying themes and sharpening imagery and reading it all aloud to see how it flows and feel out any bad phrasing), I had a couple extra revisions with both my agent and then my editor where they basically said "I love it all, I just want more of it", and I went back to places where'd allowed myself only a single scene for some story element, and I got to expand those into multiple scenes -- sometimes whole chapters.

(Those revisions -- except for one -- didn't usually take me that long, but the turnaround time in publishing is generally kind of... glacial. I wrote three other books while I was revising Hidden Things, and that's with taking several years off for short stories and my daughter.)

The end result was that the final draft was almost double the length of the first draft, but the story itself was basically the same -- we just get to spend more time on each beat.

Did you mention it was a NaNoWriMo story when you were trying to get published? If so do you think it made it easier or harder to get picked up?

I didn't, but not out of any shame or anything -- when I wrote queries, I tried not to put in much extra information at all, of any kind. "I wrote this whole thing on an old Selectric, and paid neighborhood children to transcribe it into Word" is... interesting trivia, but ultimately it doesn't matter, and neither does any of the rest of the information you might want to share about how you got the story to its current state. All an agent or editor really cares about is:

(1) Is the story good and

(2) Does this author seem like someone who won't be a complete pain in the ass to work with for the next two years?

Point 1 should be handled by the excerpt they tell you to send (always follow their directions to the letter), and point 2 is handled by acting professionally and giving not even the faintest "special snowflake" vibe.

With that said, my perception is that mentioning NaNoWriMo during a query would not have helped, because so many writers turn right around after NaNoWriMo and submit their first drafts to a hundred agents -- that is not a habit that's going to leave anyone in the industry with a good impression of the project.

I'm wondering what challenges/advantages you felt there were using a more, "obscure" or non-traditional setting.

I pretty much see it as all advantages, though I resisted the idea initially. The benefits are pretty huge, because it isn't much-traveled literary territory, nor is it heavily mined -- all of which meant I could pretty much grab whatever material I laid my eyes on, do whatever I liked with it, and didn't have to worry much about tripping over "but that guy did that already, two years ago, in his book."

And, aside from that, I grew up out there, and spent almost 20-odd years overlaying all the wondrous imagery from the books I read on top of that landscape -- every time I go home (and it is still 'home' in some ways, even after this long) I get another idea, or two, or six.

My wife and I are both reading the A Song of Ice and Fire series, trying to keep even with each other so we can talk about it during the day without spoilers. I'm behind a few chapters right now.

I'm reading The Hobbit to my daughter for bedtime. 11th time through for me, I think. Smaug just took a header into Laketown. Good times.

I'm reading the second book in Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, because damn they're good.

Robin Hobb gave me a couple of her 'dragon' books when we met at ComicCon this year (we're both with HarperCollins) and I'm going to get to them as soon as I can -- she was so damned nice to talk to and get advice from. I haven't read anything of hers (yet), but I have read Megan Lindholm, which is practically the same thing.

Depends a bit on the character. Calliope had always been a name I've wanted to use for a character, and it fit very well in Hidden Things, because the character is very musical. Vikous was just a made-up name, which is fine because it's a made-up name "in character" as well. Gerschon was the name of someone I knew who was born in Greece, so when I needed a name for a character who was from that area of the world, it felt obvious. Gluen just seemed like a good name for a really, really fat guy. Faegos came out of some latin research on my part.

I've enjoyed a lot of serendipity when it comes to naming characters -- Calliope, for example, is a wonderfully complex name when you start to dig down into it, and I've tripped into a few others like that in other stories.

I think self-published authors who are working to replicate the quality product of traditional publishing houses are some of the hardest working emm-effers in the industry, bar none. When I locate an author like that, I do everything I can to support their work.

But Sturgeon's Law holds true in self-publishing (as it does in most everything), and while most of that "90% crap" is turned away by agents and editors in traditional publishing before we ever see it, that's really not happening with self publishing at this point, and makes it damned hard to find those people doing great stuff entirely on their own terms. I think it's also fair to say that it's harming the reputation of self-publishing; it used to be seen as vanity publishing, and now it's seen as publishing with no quality control.

Would I ever consider this for any of my own work? Sure, depending on the story. If I have a perfectly serviceable yarn that my publishers don't want for whatever reason, I see no reason not to put it out where people can enjoy it. To be honest, I'd welcome the chance to learn more about that process. I know a few traditionally published authors who mix things up with self-pub releases as well (Chuck Wendig is one), and it intrigues me even though I don't currently have anything specific that seems suited for it.

I don't think that self-publishing will replace traditional publishing at this point (any more than I think ebooks will replace print editions), but that's at least in part because the quality control isn't there, not because there aren't good authors doing good stuff.

Thanks for the reply. The only thing I didn't understand...Vanity publishing had no quality control so I don't see how self-publishing is harming any reputation. As someone who was involved with self-publishing long before it became viable I can say that the stigma is the lowest I've ever seen (though not gone).

You make an excellent point. I guess what I mean to say is that, if you are the sort inclined to dismiss self-publishing, you've changed from "oh it's all just vanity publishing" to "oh it's all unedited garbage."

I had forgotten (and shouldn't have) that the book rankings still allow the cream to float to the top. That's an excellent point, and thanks for reminding me.

Q: What are your thoughts on the various "systems" under which the divide between normal and paranormal operates in magical realism? Feel free to avoid any mention of your book's plot.

By system, I'm speaking about the existence of these creatures with the real world, the dynamics of magic and "other dimensions" if any and all that entails: where did they come from? why don't normal people know about them? Is there an overarching principle (ex: all creatures come from X, because of Y) or is it less defined?

I'm just looking for your general thoughts on the ways various authors approached this aspect of magical realism. The "logistics" of the normal/paranormal divide. What you like and don't like. Pros and Cons.

This is a tricky question, in that I'm not a hundred percent sure if I'm going to answer the question you're actually asking, but I'll give it a shot.

One of the interesting things about most authors writing in a way that would be identified as magical realism is that most of them don't write series (the only one I can think of who does is Charles de Lint, and that's arguable). You can't really say "I like the way AuthorOne does it, compared to AuthorTwo," because both those authors might (and probably do) approach the whole thing differently from book to book. Gaiman's a pretty good example of this: Coraline and The Graveyard Book work differently than American Gods or Anansi Boys, and those are different yet again from Neverwhere.

What I can say that I just generally don't like at all is when normal/paranormal divide is clean and obvious, with normal stuff here, and weird stuff there -- it's something that I've seen and I don't much care for it. Once you can put weird stuff in a box and say "as long as we don't go there or do this, we're fine," then I don't think you're really talking about magical realism -- one of the defining elements of it is that the magical and the mundane lie right alongside one another. It's fine to play around with borders-magic, but it's something to approach with caution.

To ask a second related question: does this stance extend to other genres of fantasy or more general instances of magic?

What I mean is: There seems to be two camps with regards to how magic is presented. I've referred to them as the Mystics and the Formalists.

The Mystics are novels like Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, and Neverwhere. There is magic, but its mysterious, generally unexplained, and serves to add atmosphere and wonder. It can cause problems, but rarely provides solutions.

The Formalists are novels like Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn, and Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles. Magic here is well defined, existing within a system of cause and effect. Because magic is so well defined, it sometimes loses some of its magical wonder, but gains the ability to offer more direct plot solutions.

To put the question more directly: Do you have any opinion on the subject? Any plans on how you might approach magical "systems" in future books?

As a reader, I like both approaches. Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series is a contemporary "formalist" example, and it appeals to a lot of people, including me if I’m in the right mood; Charles de Lint was probably the first "Mystic" writing in a contemporary setting -- urban fantasy as a sub-genre arguably owes its inception to him, even though a surprising number of people have never read him.

As a writer, I prefer magical realism or the "Mystics", and if I'm writing fantasy of any kind, that's very likely the path I'll take. Probably I owe that preference at least in part to Tolkien. :)

I will never hesitate to recommend Chuck Wendig, though he may not be to everyone's taste. Blackbirds is his most recent full-length novel, with its sequel, Mockingbird, coming out next week. If you want more of a sampler platter, I'd recommend his short story collection Irregular Creatures.

For something completely different, Phil Hornshaw and Nick Hurwitch recently released So You Created a Wormhole: The Time Traveler's Guide to Time Travel, which is a book in the style The Zombie Survival Guide, except a lot funnier. I met these guys at this year's comiccon (we were on a panel together), bought the book because they cracked me up in person, and definitely didn't regret the purchase. It's a lot of fun.

Shit, between the way you've approached magic to you liking Nation and wanting to get at least familiar with your writing style for Adrift. I'm sold. Why'd you have to go ruin my reading list like that?

I've always liked exploring, discovering new things, watching characters discover new things. Have you ever thought of a setting where the characters are placed somewhere they have to figure shit out from scratch without some knowledgeable bozo spoiling it all? Like a lost world/continent/valley/world - post-apocalyptic/pandemic/and so on... man, the excuses for a setup like that are endless! I always thought there were far too few of these stories, I hate those super-knowledgeable bozos :P

Oh, and since I'm not shy when it comes to spoilers, does the cover of your book have anything to do with the content? :D

Some friends and I came up with a setting called Ironwall last year -- it was sort of a post-apocalyptic world where the Earth itself had finally decided to solve 'the human problem' by letting Faerie back into the world. It's been 50 or so years, but the world has experienced about 200 years of plant growth and infrastructure decay, with the remaining human settlements clustered in the centers of big cities (where the concentration of iron is highest, and most likely to keep out the Fae). I haven't written any full-length stories for it (yet) but... In short, yes, I've definitely thought about it.

The cover has a tremendous amount to do with what's inside. I made a wishlist of everything I'd like to see on the cover, and the designer took it all, combined it into one awesome thing, and then improved on my monkey-brain chittering, tenfold. When I realized the dragon was also a map of the U.S., my mind was well and truly blown.

Ooh, good question! I love face to face meetings at readings and such, but I never feel like there's ever enough time for every question, let alone the proper conversation that could come out of that if we weren't on the clock. Because of that, I often tell people to email me and we'll talk more, so I suppose I prefer online, simply because it gives us time to cover everything.

Genres: I don't have much interest in straight fiction, either as a reader or a writer. Anything weird, though, and I'm in. Theme: There is usually a backdrop of some kind of personal loss in the stuff I write, and pretty prevalent themes about family (in all its permutations).

One of my favorite things to read that I will never write are heavily-plotted, super-intricate spy espionage yarns like what you see from Greg Rucka's Queen and Country stuff. I enjoy this sort of thing immensely, because I am TERRIBLE at that level of detailed plotting and counterplotting as a writer, so I can just sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.

The Ironwall setting sounds brilliant, and a cool setting for short stories surrounding a big story. Would be excellent since there are so many big cities after all. In any case that sounds pretty fun :)

That's part of the reason I had to ask about the cover. I thought it looked fantastic, had a familiar shape, and looked like a dragon. Simply brilliant. Who's the artist?

Ah, I wish I had time to meet my favourite authors in person. Alas, Norway isn't a prime target for visitation for, well, anyone. That's why AMA's like this is so awesome :D

I tried some googling and found no definite answers to what straight fiction is. Non-LGBT fiction?

Haha, I like that you're playing to your strengths! Also I'll check out Rucka's Queen and Country! I'm very keen on checking out a story-teller that is able to do it in a fashion that doesn't seem like one-upmanshipping and riddled with deus ex machinas in some fashion :P

The cover artist is Jacob Iacobelli, whom I presume works for at Harper. They are lucky to have him, and if I ever meet him, I'm going to buy him a beer and shake his hand.

"Straight fiction" -- More properly called "literary fiction" or just plain ol' "fiction". Non-genre stuff like The Bridges of Madison County or whatever. Unless you put some trolls under the bridges, I ain't interested. :)

The thing I enjoy about Rucka is that, in addition to the plotting of it all, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the current political and military situations in all the places he sets the books, and doesn't just use it as a backdrop, but as a key element of his plot. Good stuff.

Generally, there's about a month delay between whatever I'm writing about and when it actually happened in Eve. This was originally done because I was living in a wormhole system full-time, and I didn't want to post anything that would compromise the security of the other players in there with me. Since then, it's become less of an issue, but I'm still time-delayed by that much simply because catching up would be a pain, and wouldn't benefit anything that much. If there's some "breaking news" thing I want to write about, I just stop and write about it. Easy peasy.

Generally, I don't overlap my fiction writing and my game writing very much. I know writers who have done a lot of gaming - especially tabletop RPGs - and turned that into fiction, but doing that doesn't interest me very much, personally.1 Lately, I've started injecting a bit of fiction into my Eve posts, but that's more because I wanted to do something new to keep from getting bored. :)

One way Eve does impact me as a writer is at the meta-level. Eve as a social phenomenon is such a fascinating study of human nature -- the bad, but also the good -- in that way, it's a constant source of inspiration when I'm writing someone brutally realistic.

1 -- Caveat: if CCP asked me to write their next Eve novel, I'd say yes in a heartbeat. That would be a blast.

So looking at your book's Amazon page, I see the only review you have for it atm is from the infamous Harriet Klausner. I also see that "she" only gave it a 4 star review (I wonder if the publishers get a discount for only buying a 4 star fake review). So I was wondering how you feel about the practice of fake reviews many publishers sometimes use? Also, are you anxiously anticipating real reviews in the future, and how do you think you will handle positive reviews and negative reviews?

What kind of role do you think Urban Fantasies play in our culture and the Fantasy genre as a whole? Where do you think the popularity of the sub-genre comes from? Do you view your book and other Urban Fantasies as almost modern day fairy tales/myths?

Your book looks interesting even though I'm not a huge fan of urban fantasy, I'll definitely download a sample to my kindle and check it out. Sorry if I came off a little rough in the first paragraph, but I just happened to check the amazon page and seeing the name of Harriet Klausner again annoyed me. I know that you have nothing to do with it, but it's still annoying that publishers use this tactic and Amazon doesn't do anything to stop it. :)

What kind of role do you think Urban Fantasies play in our culture and the Fantasy genre as a whole? Where do you think the popularity of the sub-genre comes from? Do you view your book and other Urban Fantasies as almost modern day fairy tales/myths?

I love fantasy because of what it lets us say about ourselves. To paraphrase Ursula K. Le Guin, a good story is about true things, even if it’s not about real things.

Urban fantasy -- by which I guess I simply mean 'fantasy in a contemporary setting' is a wonderful evolution of that idea, because it isn't one step removed from the day-to-day of our modern lives. It's right there, standing in line at the Starbucks, or creeping around in the stairwell of your walk-up.

I think that in-your-face immediacy is (somewhat) where the popularity comes from, and I think the modern trappings help some of these books reach people who might never read something like Tolkien or A Song of Ice and Fire -- those books seem too removed for them, but take away a wizard's robes and staff, replace them with a leather jacket and a hockey stick, and suddenly you've got people picking up a fantasy story who otherwise never would. That's good stuff.

I'm not sure what the implication is...Unless I've missed something Harriet Klausner is, and has been the #1 Amazon reviewer, but to my knowledge her reviews are not paid for. She gets free copies of books (as do all reviewers) and many publishers have her high on their list of places to send ARC's (because she is fast) but I'm not clued into her being "fake."

I know of no publishers who who utilize "fake reviews" and wouldn't think that an organization as large as Harper Collins would risk their reputation on such a practice.

Maybe I'm really out of a loop on something here, but I was a bit taken back by your implication.

It's impossible that "she" reads as many books as she reviews, especially with how all of her reviews are just blurbs that you would find on the back of the book. In an average 90 day period, she reads and reviews 6 books per day, every day of the week. So far, she has read and reviewed over 27,000 books and counting! Also, all of the books she reviews are either 4 or 5 stars, no matter what kind of blurb is written.

In fairness, it's implied that she's some sort of super-speed-reader, and the only known recompense she receives is an endless supply of free books, but I highly doubt it's true. Btw, if you want to see more about her fake reviews, you can google her, or just check out this blog that keeps you up to date with her reviewing: http://harriet-rules.blogspot.com/

Honestly I shouldn't have brought it up in this AMA, it was kind of a douchey thing to do especially for a new author, but I was tired at the time when I happened to check the Amazon page and was annoyed to see her name as the only review. The last time I saw her randomly was for a Mass Effect book that was absolutely horrible (mediocre writing but it was filled with problems from the lore of the universe, grammar and spelling errors, and an autistic character that cures herself saying it was just a phase) and had all bad reviews except for one fake 5 star review from Harriet Klausner.

6 books a day does not seem like a difficult task or a speed reader. Yes, she is known for providing high ranks, but I attribute that to she may be one of those people who if they don't like a book, they won't review it. You know...following mom's advice about not saying anything if you have nothing good to say.

I found her review of one of my books Theft of Swords and it's obvious to me that she did read. There are things she wrote about that is not on the blurb. Now it could be that she just reads the "start" of books and generates her opinions from that (most of the details seemed from scenes early on). But I couldn't say one way or the other if she read the whole book. I saw nothing in the review to indicate she is a "fake reviewer" and I've never heard of her being paid (such a claim is a bit inflamatory).

So looking at your book's Amazon page, I see the only review you have for it atm is from the infamous Harriet Klausner. [...] I was wondering how you feel about the practice of fake reviews many publishers sometimes use?

I’ll be honest: the ARC for Hidden Things has actually been out for awhile, and as a result it earned quite a few reviews before the book was released; on independent sites, Goodreads (a site I’m still trying to get a handle on, personally), and places like Kirkus Reviews and Library Journal. Thus far, I haven't actually paid much attention to Amazon; there’s only been a two- or three-day window in which readers could post anything there. Until I read your question, I hadn’t realized there was a review up.

I have to say I wasn't thrilled about it.

I don't know the truth about Ms. Klausner, one way or the other. However, aside from anything else, it certainly doesn't seem to me as though she thoroughly read the book (or maybe read it at all), and that just seems as though it's wasting everyone's time.

I hope that addresses that part of your question. Follow-up if not, and I'll be sure to reply.

Also, are you anxiously anticipating real reviews in the future, and how do you think you will handle positive reviews and negative reviews?

As I mentioned, the Hidden Things ARC has actually been out for awhile, and the book has been earning reviews from many legitimate, intelligent people and institutions, and not all of them are positive; one of the reviews on Goodreads is a "DNF", which apparently stands for "Did Not Finish" review. I didn't even know those were a thing.

I said to my wife a few days ago, "You always hear 'you can't please everyone', but you don't really understand it until you start reading reviews of your book."

The five-star reviews. The two-star reviews. I see them all, I read them all, and every single one of them has taught me something about Hidden Things that I didn’t know. (Except probably that one on Amazon.)

Just for the sake of a good example, I want to specifically point out a recent review by Bill Capossere at FantasyLiterature.com; I especially like it because it is a truly nuanced evaluation of the book — he doesn’t think it’s perfect, he says so, and his critiques seem totally fair to me — yet despite this, he gives it a solid score and recommends it to his readers.

That's a good review that the book earned - a word I've used a couple times already, and which I chose with some care. I'll leave comparing that review to the one on Amazon as an exercise for the reader.

[More answers in a second reply, since the subject kind of changes from here on out.]

Thanks for writing a long reply and ignoring my virulent nature of my comment. It's too bad the reviewers from other sites didn't post their reviews on Amazon too, because that's really where I go to check reviews and buy my books. I still check out Goodreads and book blogs from time to time, but they don't have the immediacy of the buy now button that Amazon has. :)

I downloaded a sample of your book, and if I like it I'll definitely buy it and review it. Also, I don't think I've ever given anything lower than 3 stars to a book, as if I'm not going to like it I won't buy it, so you don't have to worry about a horrible review. ;)